Support Escalation Process for Partners

Audience

Partner Action Items

Make sure this information is distributed to support team

Create Support Email alias and share with the Onboarding Manager

Set up an account with Zendesk

Support Introduction

CenturyLink Cloud’s comprehensive, secure, and global cloud platform is built for business — and we back it with business-class support options. Our reseller partner’s choose from the two different Support Tiers:

Professional

Enterprise

Support Boundary

The partner provides Level 1 support to customers for all CenturyLink Cloud products that it resells. The following conditions apply to partner support services:

The partner must include Level 1 Support contact information in all web sites and materials that describe support distributed to customers.

The partner cannot list CenturyLink Cloud Support contact information for end customers.

Definition of Level 1 Support

This is the initial support level responsible for basic customer issues. It is synonymous with first-line support, Tier 1 support, front-end support, support line 1, and various other headings denoting basic level technical support functions. The first job of a Level 1 specialist is to gather the customer’s information and to determine the customer’s issue by analyzing the symptoms and figuring out the underlying problem. When analyzing the symptoms, it is important for the technician to identify what the customer is trying to accomplish so that time is not wasted on attempting to solve a symptom instead of a problem.

This level should gather as much information as possible from the end user. The information should contain the computer system name, screen name or report name, error or warning message displayed on the screen, any logs files, screen shots, any data used by the end user or any sequence of steps used by the end user, etc. This information needs to be recorded into the issue tracking or issue logging system. This data is useful to analyze the symptoms to define the problem or issue.

Once identification of the underlying problem is established, the specialist can begin sorting through the possible solutions available. Technical support specialists in this group typically handle straightforward and simple problems while "possibly using some kind of knowledge management tool." This includes troubleshooting methods such as verifying the issues, resolving username and password problems, making necessary update to the portal, verification of proper portal set up, and assistance with navigating around application menus. Personnel at this level have a basic to general understanding of the product or service and may not always contain the competency required for solving complex issues. Nevertheless, the goal for this group is to handle 70% - 80% of the user problems before finding it necessary to escalate the issue to a higher level.

CenturyLink Cloud will provide higher level support to partner under the following conditions:

CenturyLink Cloud support is provided in English only.

CenturyLink Cloud support team will work on the tickets based on the severity of the issue and the support level.

Ticket Submission Process

The most efficient and effective way to contact the NOC team (CenturyLink Support) is to email or open ticket via portal.

Create Email Address

Partner needs to create one email alias for all the support ticket requests. All support team members who will submit and review should have access to this mailbox. This enables the team to track the status of the ticket.

For example, create xyz@yourcompany.com. This is an important step as the alias will be tied to our ticketing system (ZenDesk) when you email our support team.

Create ZenDesk account (using the Email created for Support)

Our support ticketing system, ZenDesk is where you can track all the updates to your support tickets. After your email address for support please follow the following steps to set up the ZenDesk account.

Click Sign up on the upper right hand side of the page and fill the form shown below. Please enter the email address you created for the support team.Note: CenturyLink recognizes only the email address associated with ZenDesk. Any support request from another email address is not converted into a ticket. Please use the same email address for escalation.

After you sign up, you will receive a welcome email from noc@ctl.io for verification. Click the verification link and choose your password. Your account is active right away.

Information for Submitting the Ticket

Partners should ensure that they email the correct email alias, based on the urgency of the issue. You can use the ZenDesk for submitting tickets. The default priority for those tickets is designated as normal. We recommend emailing. The following information must be provided when submitting a ticket:

Partner Ticket Number (if tracked under a different number on your end)

Customer Name and Alias

External IP

Root/Admin Password if CenturyLink Cloud to login

PIN (found under Profile setting - details in section below)

Server Name

Your Control Portal Username and Pin Number

Copy of the error(s)

Brief description of the problem

Troubleshooting steps we have taken to verify/solve the problem

Which stack the error/server is on that is having issues

Screenshot of the issue, if possible/available

Your full name on all ticket updates

Email address of anyone that needs to be cc’d. The best practice is to add your Account Rep at CenturyLink to this email.

SLA for Support

The priority designation indicates the level, extent, and impact on the customer. Once assigned, the priority level is used to determine the resources allocated for resolving the ticket, timelines for resolution, and escalation matrix. Customers may assign a priority to tickets they create. Each incoming ticket is triaged and the priority assigned according to the criteria (defined in the table below).

Support Options

CenturyLink offers three support tiers for end user customers.

Developer - designed strictly for non-critical developer environments. and is not an appropriate level of service for reseller partners

Professional - default option for contracts

Enterprise - premier level of support

In order to provide the required level of support for our channel partners, either Professional or Enterprise level support is needed.

The following table describes list of operational support activities and requests offered across CenturyLink Cloud support tiers that may arise for virtual machines (VMs) provisioned on the CenturyLink Cloud platform. Support Activities are provided for Services and Systems Hosted on the CenturyLink Cloud Platform:

Does not include operating systems and/or application performance issues within a Customer’s virtual machine (VM).

Data backup services

Backups using single node/non-replicated storage and the number of days are determined by the class of storage provisioned.

Data/Server restores from backup

Until this is exposed as a self-service feature it will be provided at no cost to customers.

Network latency/interruption within the CenturyLink Cloud platform (e.g., between servers)

CenturyLink will investigate any network latency and/or service interruptions within the Platform and with our ISP vendors. Any upstream troubleshooting request is a separate billable support engagement.

Troubleshooting client-based OpenVPN issues

CenturyLink will investigate any network latency and/or service interruptions within the CenturyLink Cloud Platform and with our ISP vendors. Any upstream troubleshooting request is a separate billable support engagement.

Troubleshooting point-to-point VPN issues

CenturyLink will investigate any network latency and/or service interruptions within the CenturyLink Cloud Platform and with our ISP vendors. Any upstream troubleshooting request is a separate billable support engagement.

Service Tasks

Our team of network engineers has deep operational expertise to quickly and efficiently perform common platform activities. Just give us the details on your request and, within one business day, we'll reply with an estimate, along with a projected completion date for the task. Service task estimation and duties are performed during business hours, Monday through Friday, 9 am - 5 pm Pacific Standard Time.

Support Team/Roles at CenturyLink Cloud

Our Support team is on call 24x7 with Engineers and Leads on shifts (i.e., rotation). It is important to keep in mind that our Executives are notified regarding Urgent Issues. Please use Urgent and High Priority appropriately. Our support team will flag any abuse to the Priority designation and the user might not get the appropriate support in future, if it has been abused. Likewise, they are on a 24x7 rotation.

Thank you for your submission. A representative will be reaching out to you within 24 hours.

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